Having a vision of what you want to achieve is one thing, getting there is a whole other ballgame. There are many companies who have failed to make a tool that allows people without programming knowledge to make software. To me, that means it is probably not an easy thing to do, so how would we be able to if so many other companies couldn’t …

An Inconvenient Characteristic

Programmers live in a digital world. Ones and zeros. In contrast, business people live in an analog world, where there is an infinite number of possibilities between zero and one. When given a choice between an empty canvas with infinite possibilities and a list of predefined choices, you would think business people would prefer the canvas and programmers the list. Well, think again!

It is strange at first, but it makes sense when you think about it. Business people will choose whichever option is closest to their goal, choose, move on to the next thing. Time is money. Programmers on the other hand, want to be able to unleash their creativity and thus want every option available. So canvas it is.

This characteristic is interesting when we take a look at the choices these two groups of people make. A simple example is the choice of smartphone. Business people like the iPhone. It is simple, it always works and doesn’t provide endless possibilities to tweak everything. Programmers on the other hand, tend to prefer Android phones. These allow them to tweak almost everything.

Design Choices

The inconvenient characteristic means that when you want to design a tool for business users, you need to think differently. If you think like a programmer, you will want to create an extremely powerful tool with every option humanly conceivable at your disposal. Because then you’re able to use that tool to make anything you want. It will be like a Swiss army knife on steroids!

Designing for business people however, means limiting choices. Business people have the attention span of a three-year old on a sugar-rush (and that’s a good thing, don’t get me wrong). Their time is precious and they want to use it effectively.

When we started designing Triggre, we knew therefore that simplicity would have to be at the core of our design philosophy.